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CCC Quantitative survey. (DOCX 19 kb)

Interview Guide for Constructing Care Collaboration Volunteer Interview. (DOCX 16 kb)

Background Experiential learning through service provides opportunities to nurture and practice empathy. Of growing concern, studies showed significantly decreased empathy scores as students progress through medical school. Additionally, peer-to-peer learning provides an effective way for students to learn. Constructing Care Collaboration (CCC) is a student initiated, structured-service-learning-program that promotes the development of empathy and peer-to-peer teaching. CCC is conducted in cycles of 6 sessions. This is a mixed methods study that explores the effectiveness of CCC as a service learning platform in developing student participants’ empathy, social and cultural competencies, communication skills and peer-to-peer teaching skills, ultimately aiming to promote a culture of serving the underprivileged. Methods The study comprised of a self-administered quantitative questionnaire and qualitative interviews. Both evaluated if CCC participation developed volunteers’ social-awareness, cultural competency, communication, confidence and motivation to teach their peers. Results Quantitative data were collated from 38 completed student volunteers’ questionnaires. Volunteers generally agreed CCC improved social-awareness and cultural competency. It increased confidence of participants in approaching migrant-workers, communicating with people from different social backgrounds, and promoted a culture of peer-to-peer teaching. Thematic analysis of 17 interviews was conducted. Themes identified include: increased empathy towards migrant-workers, improved communication skills, and identifying benefits and challenges in peer-to-peer teaching. Conclusion From the quantitative and qualitative information gathered, CCC has been shown to be effective in nurturing participants’ self-reported empathy, cultural competence, communication skills and improved attitude towards peer-to-peer teaching. Given its effectiveness, CCC can be adopted as a model for structured service-learning. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1740-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.